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[YRP Students' Essays] The "Densha"

* In 1956 Horace Miner published the oft reprinted essay, "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" in the academic journal American Anthropologist. In it, he examined North American healthcare from the prospective of an outsider, renaming the United States as "Nacirema," or America spelled backwards. Young people were invited to write their own version of his essay about a culture they had lived in, adopting the voice of an outside observer and perhaps hiding the name of the country for the reader to guess....
http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~thompsoc/Body.html


Every morning, one carries one's feet onto to the magical, electrical, moving box in order to arrive at one's destination. Lucky ones get to sit and rest themselves, whereas unlucky ones must struggle and suffer in the crowd of bodies.

It is said to be that the first railway service in the world was invented in 1807 i . At this time, the box was powered by horses and was not so prestigious and not as popular as it is today. The United Kingdom Section 83(1) of the Railways Act 1993 has defined this tool of transportation as "two or more items of rolling stock coupled together, at least one of which is a locomotive" or "a locomotive not coupled to any other rolling stock" ii. Today, this locomotive has evolved to be many types of "Denshas," such as local ones, fast ones, subterranean ones, ostentatious ones, etc.

The "Densha" is utilized by millions and millions of people everyday all over the world, especially in Japan. It is very convenient and useful for school students and working humans, and so the box is inundated with these people during the time period known as "the rush hour". Humans are desperate to sit and rest and some would do anything to sit, even if they had to push another away, which is a very poignant scene. Whilst aboard the moving box, one may read, one may fall into slumber, or one may even cover one's cheeks with powder, lips with gloss, and eyes with smooth black substances with one hand, while holding a mirror in the other. Although the "Densha" can be convenient in a way, it can be a pain in the neck in another way. Due to accidents, the "Densha" is often tardy, which badly effects one's desired arrival time at the destination.

Conclusively, the "Densha" is a public locomotive and one must behave appropriately while aboard. Nowadays there can be scenes spotted in which people disturb others or soil the box with litter. It is desirable that people obey the manners of public grounds, which would definitely make the "Densha" a much more comfortable and relaxing place.


i "The Swansea and Mumbles Railway - the world's first railway service" -
http://www.welshwales.co.uk/mumbles_railway_swansea.htm
ii "Train - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train

Child Research Net would like to thank the Doshisha International Junior/Senior High School and Ayumi Yonemitsu, student and author, for permitting reproduction of this article on the CRN web site.

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